


the one where peter loves john mulaney

by alextyler518



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Autism, Autistic Peter Parker, Ficlet, Fluff, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:53:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23708689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alextyler518/pseuds/alextyler518
Summary: Peter is having an off day.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 277





	the one where peter loves john mulaney

Peter knew today was going to be a bad day when he woke up and his wrist hurt. That happened sometimes and it was always awful because he couldn’t stim properly. Whenever he couldn’t stim properly, he felt like he was going to explode. Stimming with his non-dominant hand just didn’t feel right, and he had other stims, but it wasn’t the same.

He grabbed his tangle and left his room at the tower to go meet Tony for breakfast. Every morning, he would sit at the table with Tony and just infodump about science or Star Wars or whatever special interest he was focused on at the time, but not this morning. He just ate his breakfast and fidgeted with his tangle under the table so Tony couldn’t see. Tony noticed and reminded him, “You know you don’t have to hide that from me. And you’re not even doing a very good job.”

“Sorry,” Peter replied quickly, shoving his tangle in his jacket pocket. 

“No, kid, that doesn’t mean stop,” he reassured him, “you just don’t have to hide it. I’ve done my research and you can stim in front of me.”

It made Peter smile that Tony knew what stimming was. They haven’t really talked about autism since he first told Tony that he was autistic. And he knew he could stim in front of him, but it was hard to stim in front of anyone, especially Tony. But he ignored that and took his tangle out of his pocket and used it without hiding it. He knew it was nothing to be embarrassed about or ashamed of, but still. He felt like it was weird.

After they finished breakfast, they went down to the lab to work on an upgrade to Peter’s suit. They had been working for a few hours when Peter started to feel weird. He decided to say something because he had learned by now that if it didn’t get fixed now, it would only get worse until it did. “I feel weird,” he said without even looking up from his work. 

Tony stopped what he was doing and looked up at him. “Weird how?” It was silent for a moment before he remembered that Peter was bad at open-ended questions. “Weird mentally or weird physically?”

“Weird physically,” he responded immediately.

“Do you know what it is?” Peter shook his head. “Okay,” he continued, “weird like pain or weird like off?”

“Weird like off.”

Tony looked down at his watch and walked away for a minute. He returned with a bottle of water and handed it to Peter. “It’s been a few hours since you drank something. You’re probably thirsty.” He accepted the water and thanked him. He drank the entire bottle in a few sips. He had always had problems pinpointing feelings like hunger and thirst. At home, May was on his ass about it because she knew that if she wasn’t, Peter would probably never eat or drink anything. He told her that Tony knew about that kind of thing, but he was scared to tell him about anything to do with him being autistic. He didn’t want Tony to think any less of him. Realistically he knew he wouldn’t, but he was still scared of the possibility.

Peter looked up to make eye contact with Tony for a quick second before immediately looking away. “I’m sorry.”

He looked surprised. “There’s nothing to be sorry about, kid.” They sat in silence for a second before Tony asked, “So like, I don’t want to be rude or anything, but is that an autistic thing?”

Peter looked away a little embarrassed. “Um, yeah.” Then he realized that he should probably elaborate. “Yeah, like, I’m not that great at uh knowing when I’m like thirsty and stuff. And I’m kind of off today because my wrist was kind of hurting when I woke up so I couldn’t stim normally.” That was the most he had spoken at one time all day.

“Stim?” Tony questioned.

“You know,” Peter flapped his hands twice quickly. “Stimming.”

“Gotcha,” he said, understanding. “You know, if you feel off today, we don’t have to work. We can watch a movie or something.”

“It’s fine, Mr. Stark, really.”

“This isn’t anything that can’t be done tomorrow,” he reminded him. Without waiting for a response from Peter, he went to start cleaning up what he was working on.

“Are you sure?” Peter asked just to be sure.

“I’m sure, kid,” Tony replied without even looking up.

Peter didn’t even bother to clean up his station, he just left the lab to go lay on the couch. A few minutes later, Tony joined him and put on Netflix. “Your pick, anything you want,” he said.

“John Mulaney, New in Town,” Peter chose immediately. Peter never chooses immediately, he was extremely indecisive. Tony was immediately curious if this was possibly a new special interest that Peter hadn’t told him about yet.

“So, not judging, just curious,” Tony started.

“Uh-huh.”

“How many times have you seen this?” he asked.

“Everyday for the past few weeks,” Peter answered quickly.

“Jesus, Pete,” Tony replied, “How are you not sick of this yet?”

“Autistic superpower.”


End file.
